Prime Minister Tony Abbott has spoken overnight on Sunday with Russian President Vladimir Putin as Australia begins gathering support for a draft United Nations Security Council resolution to condemn the shooting down of MH17 and demand an independent investigation.

Mr Abbott said on Monday morning that Mr Putin had said ''all the right things'' during their conversation overnight.

''Now he has to be as good as his word,’’ he told Macquarie Radio 2GB on Monday morning. ''And I will be speaking regularly to the Russian President to do my best to hold him to his word.''

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His said his priority was to do ''the right thing'' by the Australian victims and their families by ensuring bodies were treated with respect, the crash site was secured and a thorough investigation undertaken.

''Then of course, we have to punish the guilty,'' he said. ''We have to do our best to identify the perpetrators and bring them to justice.''

Mr Abbott said while there had been some signs of improvement, including Ukrainian government officials gaining some access to the site, the situation was still completely unacceptable.

''The site is being treated more like a garden clean-up than a forensic investigation,'' he said. ''The wreckage has been picked over, it's been trashed, it's been trampled.''

Australian experts are in Kiev, ready to travel to the crash site controlled by pro-Russian militiamen, who have loaded almost 200 bodies into refrigerated train wagons.

Mr Abbott said an Australian military aircraft was on standby to ''play our part to ensure that we get justice for the dead and closure for the living''.

On Sunday, Mr Abbott convened both a cabinet and a national security committee meeting.

He also met Labor leader Bill Shorten, before Mr Shorten left for a trip to the United States.

While Mr Abbott did not go into detail of what he and Mr Putin discussed, during an interview with Channel Nine on Sunday the Prime Minister said he would be putting Australia's profound concern about what was happening to the 298 bodies at the crash site and ask for Russia's help to ensure they are treated with dignity.

''If he wants to be a friend of Australia, if he wants to be a friend of decency and humanity, all assistance that he might be able to offer would be deeply appreciated at this time,'' he said.

The Kremlin's website also confirmed the conversation between Mr Putin and Mr Abbott, a translation saying that the Russian president ''expressed his sincere condolences on the death of Australian citizens in the crash of an airliner''.

The website statement added that Russia had taken steps to promote an international investigation into the circumstances of the crash and ''both sides stressed the importance to the completion of the investigation to avoid politicised statements in connection with the tragedy''.

It concluded by saying that Mr Putin and Mr Abbott had ''agreed to continue contact''.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, meanwhile, said overnight on Sunday that the Australian government would not rest until the bodies of 37 citizens and residents ''murdered'' over the Ukraine are repatriated and the perpetrators of the missile strike that killed them brought to justice.

Ms Bishop arrived in Washington DC on Sunday morning and received detailed briefings from CIA chief John Brennan and the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, at the residence of Australian Ambassador Kim Beazley.

She said those meetings confirmed that ''the possibilities as to what caused this crash have narrowed''.

''What we do know is that MH17 was brought down by a missile in eastern Ukraine in territory held by the Russian-backed rebels,'' Ms Bishop said.

''The details should be the subject of an international investigation.''

She said separatists had restricted access to the site, moved bodies and tampered with evidence.

Ms Bishop was scheduled to travel to New York later to meet with foreign counterparts including the Dutch foreign minister and British foreign secretary, before leading the Australian UN delegation’s team in pushing for a tough resolution calling for immediate access to the crash site and an independent international investigation into the missile strike that brought down flight MH17.

She said she hoped a resolution would be passed as soon as possible. A United Nations Security Council meeting is expected to be held on Monday in New York.

''I say to the separatists and the Russian government that backs them, that there are 298 bodies on that site. Their families, their loved ones want them home now,'' she said.

''This is not a time to use bodies as hostages or pawns in a Ukrainian-Russian conflict.''

She said the UN was an appropriate forum to express global outrage at an attack that had affected so many nations.

''Australia has a great deal at stake here - 37 Australians – 28 citizens and a number of permanent residents of Australia – were on that flight,'' Ms Bishop.

''They have been murdered and the Australian government will not rest until we are able to bring the bodies home to the Australian families who are waiting for them, and will not rest until an independent investigation is established that is impartial and thorough and competent and able to determine who is responsible for this and they are brought to justice.''

During a stopover in Tokyo Ms Bishop used her time to call some of the families of Australians who had been on the flight.

''I can't overstate how determined the Australian government is to support the families.''

Ms Bishop also told Sky News on Monday morning that she expected Russia to support the UN resolution.

She said Australia was seeking the ''strongest possible resolution of the United Nations Security Council to secure the site of the air crash so that the bodies ... killed on this flight can be identified, retrieved and repatriated back to Australia''.

It ''condemns in the strongest terms the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17'' and ''demands that all states and other actors in the region refrain from acts of violence directed against civilian aircraft''.

''It's an outrage that the site has been contaminated, bodies have been removed and have not been handed over to independent authorities,'' she told Sky News.

Rhetoric against Mr Putin has escalated after reports at the weekend that US intelligence believes Russia supplied sophisticated surface-to-air missiles to Ukrainian separatists and attempted to remove them after the strike.

America’s chief diplomat, Secretary of State John Kerry, appeared on five major political talk shows on Sunday morning to lay out the case against Russia.

''Russia has armed the separatists,'' Mr Kerry told ABC's This Week. ''Russia has supported the separatists. Russia has trained the separatists. Russia continues to refuse to call publicly for the separatists to engage in behaviour that would lend itself to a resolution of this issue.

''And the fact is that only a few weeks ago, a convoy of 150 vehicles of artillery, armoured personnel carriers, multiple rocket launchers, tanks, crossed over from Russia into this area and these items were all turned over to the separatists.''

Speaking on CNN he said he had reports of ''drunken separatists piling the remains in an unceremonious fashion and actually removing them from the location''.

The Democratic chairwoman of the powerful Senate intelligence committee, Dianne Feinstein, said on Sunday morning that she believed the US-Russian relationship was now at Cold War levels.

''This has become a huge human drama, and I think the nexus between Russia and the separatists has been established very clearly, so the issue is where is Putin?'' she said on CNN's State of the Union program.

''I would say, 'Putin, you have to man up. You should talk to the world. You should say, if this is a mistake, which I hope it was, say it.'

''The world has to rise up and say, 'We've had enough of this,' '' Feinstein said. ''I think we have to continue with sanctions, and that's difficult.''

Views in London have also hardened against Mr Putin, with the British Prime Minister David Cameron writing in an unusual front-page editorial for the Daily Telegraph, ''If President Putin does not change his approach to Ukraine, then Europe and the West must fundamentally change our approach to Russia.

''This is not about military action, plainly. But it is time to make our power, influence and resources count,'' he wrote.

280 comments

Its already clear that the 'evidence' is being compromised, how much is left by the time any independent investigators arrive is anyones guess, or how much has disappeared back into Russia never to be seen again.

Commenter

SteveH.

Date and time

July 21, 2014, 7:56AM

@SteveH:Diplomacy will be the key to the outcome of the investigation into the MH17 tragedy. While Russia it seems is central in the unfolding saga regarding securing the crash zone and subsequent crash investigations it would be wise to tone down the rhetoric and not push Putin into a corner. Tony Abbott talks endlessly about a calm, reasoned and methodical approach to domestic issues, the same should apply to international issues of this magnitude. Russia is after all a super power and we should not forget that.

Commenter

JohnC

Location

Gosford NSW

Date and time

July 21, 2014, 9:28AM

SteveH.

The US already has the evidence. It has a number of airborne capabilities that would have monitored the missile launch up to the strike.

The evidence on the ground is for the ICAO / FAA officials. They will easily find evidence of missile (rocket) propellant once they have access to the site.

Commenter

j frank parnell

Location

los alamos

Date and time

July 21, 2014, 9:33AM

Abbott is behaving like a leader, I am not a rap for him ususally but credit where credit is due. But the delays are intentional on investigations and the teeatment of the bodies by these "people' is a crime as well.

Commenter

G sacramento

Date and time

July 21, 2014, 9:39AM

Abbott and Putin should be 'best friends' in no time.

Commenter

GOV

Location

Sydney

Date and time

July 21, 2014, 10:07AM

G sacramentoTony puffing his chest out? Being a leader?You have to be kidding.This plays to Tony's one and only strength - being a bully.How do we know what Putin said to Tony.Neither guy is known for telling the truth.

Commenter

Steve

Date and time

July 21, 2014, 10:11AM

I dont get it, what are the rebels meant to do, leave the bodies in over 30 degree heat in the sun for longer? Also, if so many journalist are able to get there, why has the international independent investigation team not managed to get there yet? I have heard nothing from the rebels saying they would not let them in. And by independent team I do not mean the Ukrainian Government, they are hardly independent in this situation.

Some other issues I would love to have answered is why the flight was sent over that area, according to some flight tracking sites the doomed flight went much further north than it usually did. Can the media maybe address that? Would be good to have answers on that.

Personally I am very concerned about the way the media and our government is blaming Russia for this, seems to me that if they were involved, it was a terrible mistake. And if that is not acceptable to the media and government, where is the outrage directed at Israel for its unfortunate mistakes in killing women and children in Gaza. There is so much at the moment that just does not add up....

Commenter

Walo

Location

Perth

Date and time

July 21, 2014, 10:13AM

@ JohnC. Perhaps Abbott should take a leaf from the Dutch Prime Minister's book, who, unlike Abbott, has not laid blame, but has stated that the perpetrators will be caught and punished WHOEVER they are. Abbott has ramped up the rhetoric to try and compensate for his government's dismal performance, in a similar way to the MH370 disappearance. Playing the histrionic knee jerk blame game solves nothing, and only exacerbates the anger and grief that we all should feel because of this criminal murderous act.

Commenter

Nonrev

Date and time

July 21, 2014, 10:21AM

@ Walo From what I've seen, there's been plenty of condemnation of Israel for its mistakes. But they are actually at war with an enemy that fires missiles from densely populated areas hoping for just such mistakes. I don't think MH17 was firing missiles at the pro-Russian separatists day and night.

Commenter

Parallax View

Date and time

July 21, 2014, 10:32AM

Putin has been regularly reminding us that in all things Russian, he's the man! This would indicate that he has chosen not to interfere with his band of rebels and there goals against the Ukraine until they have squirrelled away as much evidence as they can to protect the guilty before international investigators arrive.Putin is not a friend of anyone except Putin. This will be a long and drawn out process to find and convict the guilty.

21 Jul
Presumably there are at least a few politicians in the great Western capitals who have some idea of how to get a grip on the current global chaos. Perhaps at some point they will let us know what it is. At the moment, all that we are getting is banalities and obfuscation, which seem to be a cover for total panic. Apart from the obvious words of condolence and horror over the shooting down of a civilian airliner, no one seems to have anything meaningful to say about an incident that could have the diplomatic significance of the sinking of the Lusitania.

21 Jul
Ukraine, as we know it, is dead. The country is irrevocably broken into two by ethnicity, language, geography and now blood. The sooner the people of the Ukraine accept this, and the European Community, the Russians and the Americans accept this, the sooner the nation can divide into its two natural parts and move on.

21 Jul
US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday the evidence indicates a Russian missile was used to shoot down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, while Britain said Moscow faced "pariah" status and the threat of further economic sanctions.

21 Jul
A distraught, grieving mother summed up a swelling mood of despair and anguish in the Netherlands on Sunday at faltering efforts to repatriate the bodies of loved ones killed in the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17.

21 Jul
Pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine say they are keeping what they believe to be the MH17 black boxes in the eastern city of Donetsk, but they say they will need experts to confirm the boxes are in fact the doomed plane's flight recorders.